Downtown Washington DC, and Agent Mulder, looking a little dishevelled, steps out of a dark car. “Uber?” asks Agent Scully, who has been waiting for him. “Hitchhiked,” says Mulder. He’s kidding. They circle each other, looking each other up and down and practically sniffing, like animals in season. “I’m always happy to see you,” says Scully. “And I’m always happy to find a reason,” says Mulder.

And in less short? So back in 1947, a UFO crashes in the New Mexico desert, an incident that is covered up by the authorities. Duh, anyone who has ever asked whether we’re really alone knows that, right? Yeah, but do you know what “they” were doing here in the first place? No, not to take over, in fact they were here out of concern for mankind, after watching us blowing each other up with atom bombs.

And how do we repay this friendly neighbourliness? We kill them – well, the men in black shoot the one who crawls from his wrecked UFO. A doctor carries the body away from the scene, to see what can be learned, and extracted. Quite a lot, as it happens.

Back to now, and a young woman with mind-reading powers called Sveta has memories of being abducted by aliens, made pregnant and having her foetuses removed. Later she confides to Mulder that it wasn’t aliens after all, but men – humans using technology harvested from aliens (now you see the significance of New Mexico). Mulder is shown an ARV – alien replica vehicle – triangular, a bit like a stealth bomber but it can disappear, and runs on the Earth’s gravitational field.

That is the good news: fossil fuels, CO2 emissions, global warming, sorted. On the downside, the planet is under another threat: alien tech – and alien tissue – is being used by people to abduct and experiment on others. There is no alien conspiracy, all that work, the X-Files, forget it, a big red herring; in fact, it’s a human conspiracy, the “uber-violent fascist elite” (and Mulder’s not talking about minicabs here) plotting to take over the world. GCHQ, 9/11, Ed Snowden, genetic engineering, fast food – don’t you see, everything fits in.

That is what Mulder now believes; Scully is more of the dangerous claptrap opinion, as ever. But then she is part of the story, being part alien herself … That’s right, Scully, like Sveta, has alien DNA. Which has implications for their – her and Mulder’s – child. Oh yes, not only did they have a relationship, they had a child, a son, though I’m not sure where he is now, probably abducted …

I think that’s it, there’s a lot to take in. The episode is called My Struggle, which could refer to my efforts to keep up with Mulder’s many expository monologues. Hardcore X-Files aficionados are going to be better judges of whether it makes any kind of sense or not, and may be more thrilled about the entire exercise. I was more of an occasional visitor; I appreciated David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s performances, their attractiveness and their chemistry. And the horror and the dark, brooding menace of the show, without getting too entangled in series canon or story arc.

It is that X-Files murky menace and gloom that is lacking in this, though. Perhaps it’s because television – and the world – has changed in the past 14 years, and what hit a nerve then doesn’t so much any more. Like going back to a house that gave you the creeps when you were a kid and wondering what all the fuss was about. It feels a little obvious (if something so complicated can be obvious), unsophisticated, crude even – certainly when poor Sveta in her car is caught up by a ship, and a green beam comes down to get her. Green beam, in 2016?

I did enjoy the appearance of Smoking Man at the end, now smoking through his tracheotomy. And Mulder and Scully, Duchovny and Anderson, circling and eyeing each other up … maybe they have to hold their heads a little higher, to prevent under-chin baggage and saggage, but they’re still a damn fine-looking couple of agents. It’s still there, that chemistry.